CHAPTER 2

AIRWAY TO THE MIDDLE EAST

The oldest of the air routes under ATC's jurisdiction, and
throughout
1942 the most important, reached from Florida across the South Atlantic
to Africa and the Middle East. It had been established in the pre-Pearl
Harbor days of 1941 as a lend-lease supply line to British forces
fighting in the Near East. Ferrying of aircraft along the route had
started as early as June of that year, when a Pan American Airways
subsidiary undertook the delivery of twenty lend-lease transport planes
to Lagos on the Nigerian coast of western Africa, whence the British
had developed a trans-African air route to Khartoum in the
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The success of this first operation led to
contracts between the War Department and the Pan American organization
for more permanent ferrying and transport services all the way into
Khartoum. Just before Pearl Harbor similar services under military
control were opened into Cairo.*

Direct involvement of the United States in the war brought a quick
expansion of the Pan American contract services. Two-engine Douglas
transports were placed on the run from Florida to Natal, a move which
made it possible to concentrate the few available long-range Clipper
flying boats on the overwater hop from Brazil to the African coast.
Additional airplanes and pilots were sent out to Africa to build up the
trans-African transport service into Cairo. From Cairo the line was
extended eastward to Basra and Tehran—transfer points for
delivery of
lend-lease aircraft to the Russians—and to Karachi, gateway to
India.
Beyond Karachi the Tenth Air Force opened a trans-India service and
began flying supplies over the Hump into China in April 1942.
Meanwhile, two other contract carriers had inaugurated transport

*
See Vol. I, 319-42, 353-56, for
discussion of the early history of
the South Atlantic route.

--46--

services over the route. Transcontinental and Western Air,
employing two Boeing Stratoliners which had been purchased by the
government, began flying between Washington and Cairo in February; and
Eastern Air Lines, having opened a two-engine transport service to
Trinidad in May, extended its operations to Natal in late June,
paralleling the existing Miami-Natal service of Pan American Airways.
Through most of 1942, lend-lease planes, with few exceptions, were
delivered over the South Atlantic route by crews of Pan American Air
Ferries. Aircraft deliveries by the Pan American organization had not
exceeded ten a month before February 1942, and nearly all of these had
gone to the British. But business picked up in March, and by early
summer a steady flow of planes was moving out to British forces in
Egypt, to the Russians through Iran, and, in lesser number, across
India and over the Himalayas to the Chinese.1

By the end of June, 391 of the AAF's own planes had been ferried
across
the South Atlantic (250 of them by military crews) on their way to
India, China, and even the Southwest Pacific. Before the Japanese
captured Singapore in February 1942, thirty-six heavy bombers, intended
originally for the Philippines, had been flown to India by way of
Africa and thence across southeastern Asia and the East Indies to
Australia.* Thereafter
reinforcements for Australia went by way of the
Pacific, but the Atlantic-African route continued to have the most
critical importance for military operations in India and China; in
Russia, where the great spring offensive of the Germans by July had
opened the road to Stalingrad and the Caucasus; and in the Middle East,
where Rommel threatened destruction of Britain's long-established
position.

The Overseas Wings

The southeastern air route, as it existed in the critical summer
months
of 1942, began in southern Florida and extended down through the
Caribbean and Brazil as far south as Natal. At Natal it turned eastward
across the Atlantic narrows to the African coast and then reached
across central Africa to Khartoum, where it divided. The main line
extended north to Cairo to eastward through Habbaniya and Basra to
Karachi, thence across India and Burma into China, with a branch line
from Habbaniya up to Tehran in Iran. An

*
Of the forty-four bombers ferried to the
Southwest Pacific by late
February 1942, only eight went by the Pacific route.

--47--

alternate route eastward from Khartoum passed through Aden
and skirted the Arabian coast into Karachi, where it joined with the
route out of Cairo.

Strung along the route were dozens of bases in various stages of
construction and subject to a variety of jurisdictions. ATC had actual
command over only one of the bases, the staging base for ferried
aircraft at Morrison Field, West Palm Beach, Florida; two other Florida
bases, at Miami and Homestead, would be placed under its jurisdiction
before the year was out.2 Beyond the continental
United States the
installations through which transient planes passed were controlled by
overseas theater or base commands, by foreign states, or by Pan
American Airways.3 On such bases the Air
Transport Command had a
position somewhat analogous to that of a tenant. It depended on theater
or base commands for most housekeeping services and for heavier forms
of maintenance, but had its own administrative, transient-service, and
ground-crew personnel. Many of the bases along the route were used only
occasionally as alternate landing fields and so had no assignment of
ATC personnel at all.

During the first half of 1942, the Air Corps Ferrying Command had
begun
to exercise a limited degree of control over transient aircraft through
a loosely organized system of "control offices" located at major
bases.4
These control offices were not formally activated units;
their personnel, often no more than a half-dozen men, were assigned to
domestically based squadrons and sent out on detached service. Not
until June 1942, when the foreign operations of the Air Transport
Command were placed under the direction of five newly activated foreign
wings,5
did these overseas units find a place in an organization
specifically adapted to their needs. At that time each wing received
one or two ferrying groups, later redesignated transport groups, which
became the operational arms of the wings. The transport groups in turn
controlled flight activities at the bases through subordinate
squadrons. As a rule, one squadron was assigned to each base, but at
the larger bases there might be two or more squadrons and at the
smaller ones only a detachment.6

The group and squadron system of the Air Transport Command grew
out of
the usual War Department and AAF practice of organizing special units,
with rigid tables of organizations, for each type of military activity.
But this plan soon proved to be too inflexible for ATC, whose personnel
requirements varied from base to base according

--48--

to the size and type of activity conducted at each station.
After more than a year of experience, the group and squadron system was
scrapped in favor of what came to be known, in the peculiar jargon of
the military personnel people, as "exact manning tables." Under this
new plan, the personnel requirements of each station were measured
exactly on a functional basis, and men were assigned accordingly, not
to a standard T/O unit, such as a squadron, but to the station itself.
The exact requirements of all stations were then consolidated at wing
headquarters to form the basis for the wing's over-all manning table.
As long as the wing commander stayed within the limits of his
authorized strength, he could now shift his men about from job to job
or from station to station as required. The new principle provided a
necessary flexibility for efficient operation and conserved
manpower.7

Along the southeastern route, three wings were organized
initially— the
Caribbean Wing, with headquarters at West Palm Beach, Florida; the
South Atlantic Wing, whose headquarters was located first at Atkinson
Field, British Guiana, and later moved to Natal, Brazil; and the
Africa-Middle East Wing, with headquarters at Accra in Britain's Gold
Coast Colony.8 Following the invasion
of North Africa and the
extension of ATC activities into that area, the African jurisdiction
was divided on 15 December 1943 into two wings: the North African and
the Central African.9

The Caribbean Wing had immediate direction over activities in
Florida
and in the Caribbean area. Its original jurisdiction embraced only the
mainland bases and Borinquen Field on Puerto Rico, the most important
ferrying and transport base in the Caribbean and a key defense
outpost.10 In 1943, however, the
wing's limits were extended south
to the boundary between French Guiana and Brazil to coincide with those
of the Antilles Department of the Caribbean Defense Command, which
supplied most of the base services for transient aircraft.11
To a
large degree, the Caribbean Wing job remained that of managing the
aerial ports of embarkation on the mainland. Most ferried aircraft on
the way overseas were given a final checking and servicing at Morrison
Field, the major continental ferrying base, and here the ferrying crews
had their papers put in order, were issued overseas equipment,
inoculated, and briefed on route conditions.12 A
few passengers and
a small amount of freight were carried on ferried aircraft when there
was extra space, but, for the most part, passengers, cargo, and mail
moved out of the 36th Street Airport at nearby Miami,

--49--

where transport aircraft operating south from Florida were
based.13
In September 1942 a third continental base, Homestead Field
near Miami, was assigned to the Caribbean Wing in order to insure
adequate staging facilities for the heavy flow of ferried aircraft
anticipated after the invasion of North Africa. It was also assumed
that winter conditions along the North Atlantic route would soon cause
ferrying to Britain to be shifted to the South Atlantic.14

Aircraft leaving Florida usually landed first at Borinquen Field,
about
1,000 miles to the southeast, before proceeding on to either Waller
Field on Trinidad or Atkinson Field in British Guiana. Four-engine
planes, however, often overflew Borinquen and landed first at Waller or
Atkinson. The few fighters or trainer aircraft ferried to
Latin-American countries, or on to Africa, took a short-hop route
through the Greater Antilles and the Leeward Islands into the South
American continent.15

On leaving the Caribbean Wing, aircraft and crews came under the
control of the South Atlantic Wing, whose original jurisdiction
extended from Trinidad down along the Brazilian coast to Natal and
across the South Atlantic as far as the African coast.16
Along this
5,000-mile segment of the route were located five major air bases and a
number of secondary bases, all spaced at intervals of several hundred
miles. Waller Field and Atkinson Field were built on sites obtained
from the British under the destroyer-base-lease deal of 1940. These
were later transferred to the jurisdiction of the Caribbean Wing, but
the South Atlantic Wing continued through the war to control ferrying
and transport activities at the great bases at Belém and Natal
in Brazil and at Wideawake Field on Ascension Island.

Belém and Natal were built by Panair do Brasil, a Pan
American
subsidiary, with funds appropriated for the Airport Development Program
of 1940.17 Both fields were ready
for limited use soon after Pearl
Harbor, but in June 1942 they were still in a primitive state of
development, inadequately manned, and barely able to support the
growing volume of traffic. At Natal the Ferrying Command had only four
officers and fifty-seven enlisted men as late as mid-May, and only five
nondescript buildings stood on the tract of sand and scrub brush
traversed by two 6,000-foot runways.18 However, a new
construction
program just under way would eventually make the Natal base one of the
largest and best equipped in the world.19Belém was in
much
the same shape as Natal at the time Rommel was

--50--

marching upon Egypt, but here, too, a new construction
program had just been inaugurated.20 Lesser bases were
spaced
conveniently along the route at Amapa, São Luiz, Fortaleza, and
Recife.21

Probably no other air base used by the Air Transport Command had
such
strategic importance as that on Ascension Island. This anchored
airdrome of volcanic rock, covering an area of only thirty-four square
miles, was located in the South Atlantic approximately midway between
the Brazilian bulge and the African coast. Ferrying Command officials
had turned their attention to Ascension as a potential base as early as
the fall of 1941, when it became clear that American military as well
as lend-lease planes would be flying the South Atlantic route to
Africa.22 Situated 1,437 statute
miles from Natal, and 1,357 from
Accra in the Gold Coast Colony, Ascension would make it possible for
two-engine planes to cross the South Atlantic in two fairly easy jumps
with a normal gas load.23 Before the base was
opened, twin-engine
craft could make the approximately 1,900-mile direct flight from Natal
to Africa across the narrowest part of the Atlantic only after the
installation of extra gas tanks, an expensive and time-consuming
modification. Four-engine bombers and transports could fly directly
from Natal to Roberts or Hastings Fields in Africa without difficulty,
or even to Accra, 2,500 miles away, but, by using refueling facilities
on Ascension, four-engine transports could take on a much lighter load
of gasoline at Natal, increasing proportionately the amount of payload
carried. With a stop at Ascension, it was even possible to ferry
fighter aircraft to Africa, as was done with P-38's in 1943,* an
accomplishment that otherwise would have been impossible.

In peacetime, Ascension was a British cable station and had a
normal
population of about 165 cable-company employees, the maximum number
that could be sustained on the island by its limited water supply.24
Negotiations were opened with the British early in 1942 for use of the
island for an airdrome. Britain readily agreed;25 if
for no other
reason, she stood to benefit tremendously in the greater ease with
which lend-lease deliveries to Africa could be effected. A board of
American officers, headed by Lt. Col. Philip G. Kemp of the Ferrying
Command, made a preliminary survey of Ascension and selected a
tentative site for the airdrome.26 By March 1942 an
American task
force, made up principally of troops of the 38th Engineer

Combat Regiment, but containing also coast artillery,
quartermaster, signal corps, hospital, army airways communications, and
other units, was on its way to the island to begin construction work.
Unloading the supplies, machinery, and construction materials from the
three freighters was no easy job. Ascension has no harbor proper, and
the projecting shelf of volcanic rock prevents ocean-going vessels from
making a close approach to shore. Supplies had to be unloaded by barge
or lighter, but even this was impossible when heavy southwest rollers
were running. Construction work got under way by 13 April, and less
than three months later, on 10 July, the 6,000-foot runway was open for
traffic. In the meantime, the task force had constructed underground
gasoline storage tanks, roads, barracks, a hospital, a distillation
unit for distilling sea water, an electrical plant, gun emplacements,
and ammunition dumps, all carefully camouflaged.27

There was an airman's ditty, originating with some imaginative
pilot on
the South Atlantic run, that goes:

If I don't hit Ascension
My wife will get a pension....

Actually, the island had a radio beam on it, and the navigators
had no
great trouble hitting it. The real worry of the ferry or transport
pilot, in the early days at least, was taking off from the Ascension
runway in the face of a great cloud of birds. It had long been the
habit of the sooty tern, known locally as the "wideawake," to come to
Ascension to lay and hatch its eggs. Within a few weeks after the
Ascension airfield had been opened for traffic, the terns began to
arrive on schedule. One large colony's usual nesting ground was located
just beyond the far end of the newly constructed runway. This did not
discourage the birds, however, and they settled down to lay their eggs
and stay for the nesting period. They were a real menace to plane and
pilot, for every time a plane started down the runway the roar of the
motors brought a huge flock of birds into the air right in its path.
Heavier planes, unable to climb quickly enough, were obliged to pass
right through the mass of birds, running the risk of a broken
windshield, a dented leading edge, or a bird wedged in engine or air
scoop.28

Getting rid of the wideawakes was a headache that brought
sleepless
nights to the highest echelons of the AAF. Smoke candles were tried,
and dynamite blasts, but both proved equally ineffectual. Someone got
the inspired idea that cats would do the job, but when a

--52--

planeload of cats was brought in to kill off the terns, the
cats were themselves eaten by booby birds, a larger species with an
extremely strong beak and neck. Finally, AAF Headquarters sent down a
well-known ornithologist, Dr. James P. Chapin of the American Museum of
Natural History, who advised that, if the eggs were destroyed, the
birds would leave and not again nest in the same area. With some 40,000
of their eggs smashed, the terns began finally to move away from the
runway area to join colonies on other parts of the island. AAF
officials from Washington to Chungking rested easier.29

A unique feature of the South Atlantic Wing and the Africa-Middle
East
Wing was that in each case the ATC Wing commander was also the theater
commander, for in both Brazil and in central Africa, air transport and
ferrying were the principal military activities. Brig. Gen. Robert L.
Walsh was placed in command of the South Atlantic Wing in June 1942,
assuming at once some of the duties of a theater commander.30
The
following November, when a theater command under the name of the United
States Army Forces in South America (USAFSA) was organized, General
Walsh took over as commanding general. His theater headquarters was
established at Recife, about 150 miles to the south of Natal; but South
Atlantic Wing headquarters remained at Natal.31

Brig. Gen. Shepler W. Fitzgerald went to Africa in June 1942 as
commander of both the Africa-Middle East Wing and a new theater
command, United States Army Forces in Central Africa (USAFICA). His
headquarters, wing and theater, were established first at Cairo, but
were soon moved to Accra, on the Gold Coast, the permanent
location.32 There he began the
militarization of Pan American's
contract operations in Africa, an undertaking that required about six
months to complete. Pan American had gone into Africa under contracts
with the American and British governments made in August 1941. Starting
with seven twin-engine transports in October 1941, Pan American
Airways-Africa had thirty-eight planes in operation by the following
June and in the meantime had extended its flights from Khartoum up to
Cairo and eastward to Karachi. PAA-Africa not only operated a transport
service for the benefit of the United States and its allies but also
ferried aircraft across Africa, including AAF planes, lend-lease
aircraft, and British planes coming down from Britain on their way to
the Middle East.*

Shortly before Pearl Harbor the Ferrying Command, in
anticipation of an enlarged military traffic to the Middle East, had
taken steps to station its own military personnel at major bases in
Latin America and across Africa. There was no thought, initially, of
supplanting the Pan American organization; but under wartime conditions
it soon became clear that military control of the African segment of
the route, which skirted Vichy French territory and extended into the
Middle East war zone, would become necessary for security. Furthermore,
the manning of the African bases with both military and Pan American
civilian personnel was wasteful.33 General Arnold and
General Olds
of the Ferrying Command had already reached the conclusion that the
trans-African route should be manned exclusively by military personnel
when the necessary authority was given in a War Department directive of
18 February 1942.34 This order required
the termination of all civil
contract activities overseas except in the Western Hemisphere and
Hawaii. Militarization, strongly opposed by Pan American Airways,
proceeded in the face of an uncooperative attitude on the part of some
Pan American officials, leading to a bitter quarrel between General
Fitzgerald and the company's manager in Africa. Nevertheless, by
December all transcontinental operations and facilities had been taken
over by the Air Transport Command.35

The forced withdrawal of the Pan American organization from Africa
did
not affect its contract services in the Western Hemisphere or its
flying-boat, and later C-54 and C-87, operations across the South
Atlantic to the western coast of Africa. It even operated transports
across Africa to the Middle East and India, as did other contractors,
but after December 1942 all planes crossing Africa used bases and
facilities completely under military control. The Pan American Air
Ferries contract was also canceled, and its lend-lease ferrying
activities ceased entirely at the end of October 1942.36

General Fitzgerald had another difficult job in bringing to
completion
a more southerly and safer route across central Africa, which had been
decided upon earlier in 1942. In its original conception, the alternate
route, running roughly parallel to and a little south of the equator,
was for moving heavy bombers across Africa and the island
steppingstones in the Indian Ocean to Australia; but this plan was
abandoned when the Japanese advance reached the area of the Cocos

--54--

Islands in February.*
The Congo route, as it became known,
now took the form of an alternate airway into the Middle East. Bases
were constructed at Point Noire in French Equatorial Africa, at
Leopoldville and Elisabethville in the Belgian Congo, and at Nairobi
in Kenya. In the dark days of 1942 this alternate route offered
insurance against loss of the central African airway, but the rising
fortunes of Allied military operations soon robbed it of value. Even
before the fall of Tunisia in the spring of 1943, the Congo route no
longer possessed military significance.37

Reinforcements for the Middle East

Through the first half of 1942 most of the aircraft flown from the
United States to the British in Egypt had been transport aircraft for
the RAF's local air transport fleet in Egypt, but Rommel's threat
brought a sudden rush of combat planes. In June, the RAF began
receiving Lockheed and Martin medium bombers flown across the South
Atlantic.38 By the end of 1942, a
total of 398 such aircraft—
B-34's, A-28's, and A-30's—had been delivered to the British by
Pan
American Air Ferries or by military crews.39
Arriving too late to be
used in the last-ditch defense of Egypt, these planes were employed to
great advantage by Montgomery in the Allied counteroffensive that fall.

Thanks to Britain's gallant stand at El Alamein, the Russians
continued
to receive B-25's by way of the South Atlantic, and, beginning in
October, Douglas A-20 light attack bombers, previously shipped by
water, were being delivered by air to Soviet representatives at Basra
and other airports in the Persian Gulf area. Altogether, a total of 240
aircraft were flown to Russia by way of the South Atlantic air route
during 1942, of which 102 were B-25's and 138 were A-20's.40This
does not give, by any means, a complete picture of lend-lease aid to
Russia in the form of aircraft during this period. As early as January
1942, A-20's had started arriving by water transport at Persian Gulf
ports, where they were assembled, tested, and flown on into Russia; and
in September of that year, lend-lease planes began moving to the
Russian front by way of the Alaskan ferrying route and on across
Siberia,41 a route which became
increasingly favored.

Originally, American efforts in the Middle East had been confined
to
logistical support of the British, who carried the full combat
responsibility.

But after Rommel's victories in May and June, the United
States agreed to commit to that theater a total of nine combat groups,
of which seven groups were to be in operation by the end of 1942.* For
more immediate assistance, the AAF diverted a detachment of
twenty-three B-24's then in the Middle East on the way to China, and
late in June it ordered Maj. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton to fly from India
to the Middle East with all the few heavy bombers then belonging to the
Tenth Air Force.†
While
Brereton took steps to establish the Ninth Air
Force, the AAF ordered the immediate movement of three of the nine
groups promised for the Middle East. These were the 57th Fighter Group,
equipped with P-40's; the 12th Bombardment Group (M), a B-25 unit; and
the 98th Bombardment Group (H), its equipment being B-24's. The
movement of the three groups to the Middle East was made a special
ferrying project which took its name from the American code word for
Egypt—HEATH.42

Both Britain and the
United States had been
transporting fighter aircraft by water to the western African coast and
flying them from there along the trans-Africa ferry route to the Middle
East and beyond.‡ The
57th
Fighter Group was moved out in the same way.
The pilots, who had been given previous instruction in carrier
take-offs, and their seventy-two P40F's, were taken aboard the U.S.
carrier Ranger, which left
Quonset, Rhode Island, on 1 July. When the
ship was within a hundred miles or so of the western African coast, the
aircraft were launched in groups of eighteen. After landing at a
coastal base, the planes were then ferried across Africa to Egypt. For
the skillful piloting of the P-4o's across the jungles and desert
wastes of Africa, the 57th Group received commendations from General
Brereton and Brig. Gen. Russell L. Maxwell, the Middle East theater
commander. Losses were held to a negligible figure partly through the
efforts of ground crews, who followed by air transport. After landing
on the same fields as the fighters, the maintenance men would spend the
night checking and putting the planes in shape for the next leg of the
journey. Upon arrival in Cairo, the group moved on to a temporary
station in Palestine at the end of July. Within a month, some of the
pilots had flown their first missions over enemy territory.43

Meanwhile, the 98th Bombardment Group, equipped with
thirty-five B-24's, had moved from its training base at Lakeland,
Florida, to Morrison Field to prepare for the 10,000-mile flight to
Egypt. Because the supply and maintenance facilities for heavy bombers
in the Middle East were limited, the B-24's carried a stock of spare
parts sufficient for a sixty-day period and as many maintenance men as
possible, in addition to the regular crews. The air echelon left
Florida, by squadrons, between 17 and 30 July, and by 7 August had
assembled in Palestine.44

The air echelon of the 12th Bombardment Group (M), with
fifty-seven
B-25's, moved through Morrison Field and down along the South Atlantic
route to Africa at about the same time as the 98th Group. By way of
preparation for foreign service, the organization had already gone
through a period of intensive training at Esler Field, Louisiana, and
as a result was well qualified and well equipped when ready for
movement overseas. The B-25's of the 12th Group were among the first
aircraft to make use of the new Ascension base. All arrived safely in
Egypt, having covered the 10,000 miles from Florida in an average
flying time of seventy-two hours.45

For purposes of contrast, it is worth noting that the ground
echelons
of the 57th, 98th, and 12th Groups sailed from New York on 16 July and
reached Egypt only in mid-August.46

These groups were only the advance guard of reinforcements sent to
General Brereton. Replacements soon were flowing, and by the end of
1942 a total of 370 aircraft had been ferried to the Ninth Air Force.
While the great majority were P-40's, B-24's, and B-25's, there were
also more than 50 twin-engine transports, which made it possible to
build an effective local air transport service.47
These transports
belonged to the 316th Troop Carrier Group, whose air echelon with its
original equipment of forty C-47's had moved out to Egypt by way of the
South Atlantic route. It arrived in the Cairo area on 23 November 1942
in time to deliver Thanksgiving turkeys to American air units serving
with the British Eighth Army.48

Although the flow of aircraft along the South Atlantic route to
the
Middle East continued through the summer and fall of 1942, very few of
the planes got beyond the Middle East into India and China. From July
through December, only 25 B-24's, 33 B-25's, 5 P-40's, and 23
twin-engine transports were ferried to American combat and air
transport units in the China-Burma-India theater.49
This
uneven

--57--

distribution of aircraft was only partially corrected in
1943. During that year a total of 669 planes were delivered to the
Ninth Air Force in North Africa, while only 347 were ferried to the
Tenth Air Force and only 168 to the Fourteenth Air Force in China.50

Transport Services

The movement of the planes of the HEATH project, and the large
number
of replacements that came later, across 10,000 miles of ocean, jungle,
and desert was no easy job, but it was simple compared with that of
building up an air transportation service that would keep a steady flow
of aircraft parts, spare engines, maintenance equipment, replacement
aircrews, and mechanics moving out to General Brereton's force. The
Middle East Air Force* was
dependent upon air transport to an unusual
degree. Not only was the long water supply line around the Cape a
formidable handicap but no sound logistical plan making maximum use of
water transport and emergency use of air transport could be devised in
advance because the force was thrown together so hastily. The B-24's
had carried some spares, and a freighter had started out with a stock
of spare parts but was sunk by a German submarine. Among the items lost
were extra tires for the B-24's; as a result, General Brereton had to
cannibalize about half of his small heavy-bomber force for tires to
operate the remainder.51In an emergency of this
sort, air transport
was the only means of assuring a minimum stock of supplies until the
next freighter arrived. A similar disaster occurred when a ship
carrying a large supply of American tools and spare parts for two RAF
repair depots in Egypt and the Sudan was sunk.52 Had
the RAF been
forced to wait for the arrival of replacements by water, a large number
of combat planes would have been immobilized another three months for
want of repair.

At the time General Brereton had been ordered to the Middle East,
the
Air Transport Command was already overwhelmed by the volume of cargo,
mail, and passengers piling up at the Miami port of embarkation and at
the transshipment points of Natal and Accra. Already deployed at the
end of the South Atlantic air route, before the Middle East Air Force
came into being, were British units in Egypt, Soviet forces in southern
Russia, the American Tenth Air Force in India, and American and Chinese
air units in China—all dependent

to some degree on the air transport line out of Miami. On
17 June, General George, in urging upon General Arnold the need for
more transports, reported an accumulation of over 53 tons of cargo
awaiting air shipment at Miami, while over 40 tons of supplies, as well
as 91 passengers, had piled up at Natal.53 By 12 July, after the
movement of supplies to Brereton had started, the backlog at Miami had
increased to 138 tons and at Natal to 88 tons, exclusive of
passengers.54 At this time there
were twenty-four C-47 type
transports on the Miami-Natal route, with one Pan American Clipper
flying a regular but infrequent schedule. These planes together were
capable of moving about 11 tons of cargo a day. On the overwater jump
from Natal to Africa were five new B-24D's, four Clippers, and two
Stratoliners, the whole having a daily capacity of nine tons. On the
trans-African route from Accra to Cairo there were then operating
forty-two C-47 type planes, capable of transporting 10 tons daily.55
Because new transports were slow in arriving, the backlogs continued to
grow through the summer and into the fall. During August an officer
from ATC headquarters found 250 tons of supplies awaiting shipment at
Miami, 75 tons at Natal, and over 250 tons at Accra, where the backlog
was increasing at the rate of 2½ tons a day. He did not
exaggerate when he warned that "grave issues" depended on a more
efficient air transport service to the Middle East.56

A chief cause of the congestion at Miami and other points was the
shortage of transports, which could be overcome only as the production
of new transport aircraft made it possible. Already the South Atlantic
run enjoyed the highest priority on available transports. As with the
late summer and early fall the first numbers of the long-awaited C-54's
and C-87's were put into operation, the South Atlantic service
continued to hold its priority. Although a few C-87's had to be sent to
the Pacific, Pan American Airways inaugurated a four-engine schedule in
August 1942 with four C-54's flying between Miami and Natal.57
The
first C-87 was put to work on the South Atlantic run in October.58
By the end of 1942 the fleet operating on the transatlantic jump had
been increased to twenty-six planes—nine C-54's, four C-87's,
four
B-24D's, five Stratoliners, and four Clippers. Their daily capacity was
thirty tons, which compared most favorably with the nine tons in
July.59

Meantime, ATC had been struggling with the problem of how to
assure a
more efficient employment of the available capacity. The

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first critical point was the 36th Street Airport at Miami,
where freight from all parts of the country collected and where ATC had
only a small detachment, most of its members totally inexperienced in
the handling of cargo. The first step was to activate on 7 July 1942
Air Intransit Depot No. 6, staffed by experienced freight handlers of
the Air Service Command.60

As new screening procedures were established for the accumulating
freight, it quickly became evident that much of it did not need to be
shipped by air. For emphasis, it may be permissible to use an extreme
example. In September the depot received, for shipment to B-25's
grounded for lack of parts at Natal and Accra, two complete tables of
replacement parts for a group, each table consisting of 250,000 parts
weighing about 375,000 pounds. Actually, only a very few parts were
needed to put the grounded aircraft in flying condition. Having
ascertained what those parts were, the depot shipped the critical items
by air and rerouted the remainder for water shipment.61

The depot also saved much cargo space by repackaging. A large
proportion of the freight arriving at Miami at that time was packed in
heavy wooden crates or other materials suitably designed for rail or
water shipment but excessively heavy for air shipment. Materials were
repacked for the most part in waterproof cardboard containers which
were of light weight but at the same time gave sufficient protection
against knocks encountered in transit, the weight of other packages,
and the humidity and rain of the tropics. At one period during 1942,
repacking was required on an estimated 40 per cent of the cargo
arriving at Miami, with results calculated at a 30 per cent reduction
in weight. The weight saved on some items was almost fantastic. A
shipment of P-39 air scoops arriving at Miami weighed 128 pounds per
unit, a figure reduced by repacking to 17 pounds. On another occasion,
the depot received a package of four elevator assemblies having a total
weight in excess of 1,000 pounds. When repacked in packages, each
package weighed 108 pounds for a total saving of 588 pounds.62

As these experiences demonstrated, the operation of an air
transport
service demanded much more than the provision of a sufficient number of
planes and crews or the efficient scheduling of their flights. One of
the more difficult questions was that of determining priority for air
shipment. Much of the backlog at Miami, exceeding at times

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even the airport's capacity for storage, could be
attributed to the understandable practice by factories and air depots
of shipping supplies demanded during these first critical months to
aerial ports of embarkation before getting a necessary priority for air
shipment from ATC.63 The practice was
forbidden by a War Department
order of 27 November 1942, which prohibited the forwarding of cargo and
personnel to ports of aerial embarkation for shipment overseas unless a
priority had been previously granted by the ATC for such movement.64
At the time the order was issued, an estimated 75 per cent of the cargo
reaching the Air Intransit Depot at Miami was without priority
classification. This had been cut to 25 per cent by January 1943, and
by July of that year to about 5 per cent.65

The War Department order gave the Air Transport Command full
authority
to establish better control over the volume of traffic moving from the
interior to aerial ports, but this by no means solved the larger
problem of determining which materials should go by air and what was
the relative urgency of various shipments. The War Department had said
merely that the Air Service Command and other shippers should not
decide such questions. It was an ATC responsibility, but the priority
officers at ATC headquarters still had to depend very largely on
information received from the overseas theaters, where each commander
tended to demand the highest priority for his own emergency needs and
even, for safety's sake, to exaggerate the emergency. The War
Department and AAF Headquarters provided helpful guidance on the
relative merits of mounting claims on ATC space, but many decisions had
to be made on a purely arbitrary basis until ATC had enough equipment
to make a reasonably satisfactory solution possible. In August 1943 it
was decided to allot to each theater commander a specific tonnage for
movement by air to his area each month, leaving to him within the limit
set full right to determine the priorities for movement of the
individual items.66 Eight months later, in
April 1944, the War
Department ordered the setting-up of local priority boards within all
the theaters to act as screening agencies to pass on all requests for
air transportation and to set priorities for all incoming, outgoing,
and intratheater traffic.67 To aid the theater
commanders in
carrying out their responsibilities, a number of ATC officers
experienced in priorities evaluation were transferred to the theaters,
where they assisted in setting up screening procedures and, in many
cases, acted as executive officers of the boards.68

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But all this lay far in the future as during the critical
summer of 1942 men struggled all along the South Atlantic route to get
the freight through and, in doing so, to learn a new job. Whatever
questions of priority might be in debate at higher headquarters, there
was one priority that quite clearly remained undisputed—that of
the
South Atlantic route to Africa over all others. When a few weeks later
word came of the Allied landing in northwestern Africa, it became
evident to all that this priority would stand for some time to come.

Footnotes

1
Foreign
Ferrying Deliveries, Jan.-June 1942, compiled by ATC
Historical Br. Of the total of forty-four bombers ferried to the
Southwest Pacific area by late February 1942, eight went by the Pacific
route and thirty-six by way of the South Atlantic.